StarCraft: Brain Damage
Chapter 25: The Battle for Char
There were so many Zerglings that Shinji couldn't tell the difference between them and the ash they were fighting on. The way that they hit the bunkers, using anything on their bodies as a bashing, clawing or slashing tool to get at the Marines inside, disturbed him. So far, the troops had been able to hold them somewhat at bay with gunfire and Siege Tank bombardment.
But just recently, they had coagulated enough that the ratio of targets-to-Marine had become too much and the imaginary quarantine line broke. The Zerglings swarmed the bunkers, climbing all over them and into the firing ports. The Siege Tanks were covered in them to the point where the creatures were crawling down the barrels and entering the tanks that way.
"Thor pilots, hit the choke point!" Raynor ordered.
"There's still people down there!" Shinji replied, refusing to fire on other Raiders.
"Look at that!" Raynor shouted, "They're done for! Hit it!"
Seeing his point, Shinji targeted the area with his cannons. They belched flame and the shells smashed into the choke point, killing everything and decimating what was left of the bunkers. Surviving Zerg stood and tried to continue the charge, maimed, when the two other Thors emptied their payloads into the area as well.
The shock wave the shells caused tossed body parts and whole creatures into the lava that flanked the choke point. Shinji watched as more Zerg ran in to fill the gap and continue the attack. His cannons were reloading when he heard another pilot shout.
"Scourge to the left!" he shouted.
Shinji looked over in time to see a wave of Scourge flying low over the lava, straight for the legs of the Thors. He turned his machine as fast as he could, the locomotors creaking from the strain put on them for more speed as he tried to aim at the Scourges.
Too late.
The Scourge hit all the Thors in the legs, blowing the knee joints apart and sending the massive machines toppling to the ash. Shinji groaned as his body was jerked against the safety straps across his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He could hear pounding against the outside as Zerglings hit it over and over again.
With extreme effort, Shinji used one of his Thor's arms to push himself over onto his back. The walker complied and did so, crushing a dozen Hydralisks in the process. Laying there, he could see another Thor being ripped open by an Ultralisk while yet another was already open and its pilot had been pulled out and his chest cavity ripped open.
Zerglings ravenously tore into the pilot, ripping his limbs off and then fighting over them. Another thing he saw was the two command centers and five barracks buildings taking off straight into the sky to link up with the Hyperion. He could see the Battlecruiser hovering high above the base; Mutalisks and Wraiths trading fire with each other around it.
Shinji tried to move his Thor, but its legs were to badly damaged for it to stand up, which would have been hard even if they had been functioning. The image of the Hyperion and the retreating buildings was disturbed suddenly by the screen cracking down the middle. The visual feed flickered and died, plunging the cockpit into darkness.
Outside, a Hydralisk stuck both of its arms through the cockpit wall and pried it open, allowing sunlight to leak in and illuminate Shinji. The young pilot drew his sidearm and shot the Hydralisk in the eye with a slug, blowing through its brain and knocking it back off of the Thor. Then a Zergling squeezed through the crack.
Shinji expended his clip into it, causing it to die and flop on top of him. He pushed the dead weight off of him and onto the right joystick console. Another of the small dog-sized Zerg crawled through and jumped at him. He threw his empty pistol at it, which harmlessly bounced off of its head. The alien landed on him and bit into his stomach.
Shinji screamed as another Zergling clawed off his arm. A third, fourth and fifth crawled in and started mauling his legs, chest and throat. Unfortunately, through the whole process his head was left untouched. Which meant that just before death he was forced to sit there and watch as a Zergling positioned itself above him and slurped his intestines up into its mouth like spaghetti.
Then darkness finally consumed his vision.
A half-mile away, Traz stood smiling smugly to himself. From where he was, he could see two Ultralisks pushing each Thor into the lava one at a time while Mutalisks ravaged the Wraiths defending the Hyperion. He was convinced that the Mutalisks would do the job and that the ship that had pestered them for so long would be destroyed.
Unfortunately, God decided that things had been going Traz's way to much that day and the Hyperion loosed a barrage of plasma torpedo fire that blanketed the area his Mutalisks were in and decimated all of them. As their blood fell to the ground like a gore-filled rain, the massive vessel turned toward the swarmed base.
With all of the structures loaded back into their respective cargo bays, there was only one thing left for the ship to do before leaving. Pinpoints of red energy gathered at the mouth of the Yamato cannon, gathering the nuclear fireball that would spell doom for the Zerg still left on the ground.
"I never get a God damn break," Traz muttered and jumped into a Hydralisk burrow.
Once down in it, he shouted at the scythe-armed creature, "Move over!"
Outside there was a terrific bang and the entire remaining Zerg attack force vanished in a nuclear fire.